At the table
We awkwardly introduced ourselves as strangers do. Gathered beneath the shade of the bright green, leafy Black Tupelos stretching themselves above the powerlines in front of the Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte, we sat at the aluminum-wrought table with its accompanying chairs for the in-person artist workshop.
None of us were professional artists. None of us studied art at university, nor did we work in the industry. We all took a step of faith and left our worlds and lives for three days of exploration and art together.
We talked about when we’d found Amanda Oleander, the illustrator/artist we’d signed up to meet IRL to help us develop our art through intricate lines and Copic markers.
I
stumbled upon Amanda opening doors on other people’s lives through the Periscope app in 2015. She was a top live-streamer, and streamed daily about art and life from her studio apartment.
Others found her during a global pandemic through their ventures into self-discovery via illustration; some found her reading articles and chasing themselves down rabbit holes, eventually resonating with mirror remnants of themselves in her story.
Each of us was drawn to this woman who produced illustrated snapshots of everyday private life.
Each of us wanted to become producers ourselves.
In the workspace
We were afraid to call ourselves artists. Apprehensive of the heaviness of that word–all of its expectations and requisite proofs; our perceptions that in our current states, we couldn’t live up to the label.
We sat around a rectangular cherry conference room table inside an airy many-windowed boardroom that was to be our workspace.
Beyond the preamble of our preliminary introductions, this table would bear our artistic preludes. Our skills would be on display for others to see and judge.
Core to perimeter,
I
vibrated with anxious energy and hopefulness at the prospect.
We gushed about the vibrant and equally subdued colors in the spectrum of Copic markers and the detail generated in linework from .5mm tipped Micron pens–how they generously rewarded the viewer.
We wrote down our goals for ourselves and for Amanda, so she could offer her support and advice for our specific paths to help us grow as artists.
We sketched with mechanical pencils on the Lenox cotton paper–it had been a while for me. Its texture was both finer and coarser than my latest almost 8 x 8 Articka sketchbook.
I
drew my family front-facing with sideways-planted feet.
Amanda walked around giving gentle suggestions (have the feet face in the direction they would organically go),
walking me through toes, shoes, and ankles—limbs to phalanges;
she walked around granting small wisdoms and detailed instructions to others as well.
It felt good to be doing this (even poorly) again.
She walked us through the human skeleton, eyelids, brows, and pupils evoking sentiment, and shoulder shape and lines denoting age.
She gave us space to ask more questions to craft more tutorials.
We talked about what we wanted to gain from the workshop.
When the model came, we talked to her about her work as a model and artist.
We exchanged pleasantries and questions–who’d sketched a live model before?
Hearts in throats, eyebrows to hairlines.
None of us.
We delighted in the model’s upbeat personality and the challenge of creating something new. We stood to stretch, hesitantly and hopefully drawn to the easels and big paper pads Amanda’s assistant set up; nervous light touches from fingertips running over blank canvases ripe for our creative furnishing. We stood in anticipation.
Drawing the model
Using graphite sticks and loose renderings, we created drawings under time constraints. Different ones each time.
The model posed standing, sitting, looking upwards, looking head-on, various poses of stillness.
We rendered her delicate thin fingers, long brown legs, pursed full lips, sharp high cheekbones, the textured curls on her Caesar fade; lines, and points, and curves and shadows, of her body, the wall, the chair, the robe, the light, her bare frame.
Fingertips saturated from the graphite’s dust, we worked.
I,
not yet satisfied with how I was seeing and what I’d created,
moved the page.
I kept up loose movement, aiming to capture what I saw.
I
moved my easel closer to the window, sunlight shining through, providing me more energy.
I
settled into the small rhythm of drawing on the pad,
glancing at the model,
drawing on the pad,
thinking about what I saw, not what my mind wanted to see,
drawing over what I’d previously drawn–no eraser for graphite stick.
Sneaking glances at my co-creators, I felt insecure.
I still kept working.
I felt not as good.
I still kept drawing lines.
Kept glancing. Drawing over my mistakes, trying to craft them into something, working to arrive at a truth.
Kept glancing.
Kept moving the graphite stick, at times waiting for her to call time, because
I
didn’t know where to go next. Frustrated, seeing others still working,
I rubbed the graphite between my fingers and kept drawing.
After each timed sprint–intervals for drawing serving as a necessary constraint to prompt creation–
I
felt like I was getting somewhere.
We walked around after and looked at what others had done with their sticks, easels, and imaginations.
We felt rewarded for warm creation in hurried yet lingering moments. We revealed ourselves rapidly in good company.
Sign Your Piece
We created slices of our lives in one illustration. What a snapshot of our private moments might look like.
How did those slices create our full awareness of ourselves? How did our seeing allow us to navigate through our interior and our exterior lives?
Making, and remaking through line and shape, again, and again, and again, could help us find the answers. Personal investigation and daily invitations to meet ourselves on the cotton paper, could help us find our way.
Already confirmed in the choice that each of us made to come to the workshop, we welcomed ourselves into the beginning of an important unlocking.
We shared markers, stories, fears, and meals.
We shared space.
In three days, we created and unraveled together beautifully. We made slices of our interior, exterior.
Picasso on Exhibit
We saw art together.
We dared stand inches from Picasso's works, <someone joked about geometry, namely shapes and orifices>
I studied, up close, Bearden’s abstract and real phases–investigating humanity and later revealing it–
We contemplated brocades of centuries past in the fashion history exhibit and listened to how artists created large ceramic spheres on even larger spheric objects, washing machine parts that created ripples, human figures crafted from clay and perched atop small platforms like child-sized gargoyles.
We watched videos of them talking about how they did it.
We awed and inquired.
Together.
We gave encouragement; we asked revelatory questions about how our experiences translated into the representative pictures we created.
We commiserated on walks back to our hotel, relieved that none of the other participants were “artists” either. It gave us the courage to openly make mistakes, unguardedly ask for help, and run ideas past the artist and one another.
We shared how happy we were to have met one another, how grateful we were for the experience, and how much we looked forward to supporting and encouraging one another and keeping each other accountable.
We talked about 100-day art challenges, shared how we met our significant others and held space for one another discussing lost loved ones.
It was a beautiful, inviting, and enriching experience.
Besides serving as a reset to align my being with my becoming, this space served as a reminder for me that creating art in community was freeing for my heart and less scary than my brain made the prospect seem.
Communal creation fosters regularity
Communal creation can prompt regular creation. This supportive cocooning experience has allowed me to find time that was previously elusive to me.
I feel excited when I contemplate sharing what I’m working on in our group chat. For me, this has been a prompt to action.
By creating art in community I can create art regularly.
Communal creation tethers you to yourself and challenges you to reveal these core elements of you in your art.
In that small space of time, I saw my growth from the intentionality of community-based creation.
When you create in community, you have a gathering of other folks who share your vulnerability and you inhabit a space where you can lean on them and expect each other to create.
Isolation has not done it for me. I spend more time studying what I want to become. Instead I have learned that finding your people gives you a prompt to develop and permission to create what only you can create.
I’m learning that I can draw regularly if I don’t do it in a silo.
Tapping into an ecosystem of others who want to create has been exactly what I needed to spark a regular creative practice.
In this space, I am creating to inspire myself,
to soothe my soul,
to capture a memory,
to honor a loved one;
to remind myself that I am still living
and that with that life and breath, I have another day,
another opportunity,
another space to plant myself and grow,
and prune,
and provide shade,
comfort,
and inspiration
to the living beings all around me,
and those that will exist long after I’m gone.
Oh my gosh, I felt as though I was becoming closer to the group as you were throughout this piece. I absolutely loved that you included the drawings and photos! I can feel the intimacy growing, the picture of you laughing really bringing that home. Also this, "We were afraid to call ourselves artists. Apprehensive of the heaviness of that word–all of its expectations and requisite proofs; our perceptions that in our current states, we couldn’t live up to the label." I have felt this so many times on my writing journey. So well articulated and another great piece!
It was really a pleasure to see your drawing and your process its been two decades since I've drawn a live model, or stood next to a masterpiece (too long on both count) , but you helped me remember overwhelming feelings of beginning, and being connected to a larger tradition/legacy of being art making creatures